Innovation Endeavors

Several people asked about the incubation journey of Tetrix after we announced their seed round. When Olivier and Naunidh graduated from Stanford GSB, they shared a commitment to build a company together. But before any building started, they embarked on a months-long systematic ideation process called Research Driven Ideation—one we we were thrilled to support. Almost a year later, we led the seed round in Tetrix, a platform revolutionizing how alternative investments are tracked and analyzed. This team did everything by the book—and then made the book better. They explored multiple spaces in parallel, prototyped relentlessly, and stayed disciplined about customer discovery. If you're a founder looking for your next big idea, check out their ideation journey in this blog.

🎉 Big congratulations to the team at ElectronX on unlocking major milestones on their journey to electrifying the grid! ⚡ Read more below 👇

Excited to share this Innovation Endeavors case study on how systematic ideation led us to revolutionize information flow in alternative investments through automated LP report analysis. Thank you Harpinder Singh and Dhruv Iyer for capturing our story!

Suffolk Construction just went all in on AI 🚀🏗️ We’re thrilled to share that Suffolk has rolled out Trunk Tools across all their projects—proving that when AI is built for the field, teams actually use it. With Trunk Tools, Suffolk is: ✅ Making faster decisions with real-time insights ✅ Reducing inefficiencies by unlocking buried job site data ✅ Improving safety with instant access to SOPs & risk identification This isn’t just another tech rollout—it’s a game-changer for how construction teams operate. Are you leveraging AI to keep up? A huge thank you to Jit Kee Chin, Joseph Kodsi, and the entire Suffolk team for leading the way in AI-powered construction. This is what real adoption looks like. 🔗 Watch how Suffolk is getting ahead: Watch now 🎥👇 #ConstructionTech #AI #Innovation #TrunkTools #Suffolk #LetBuildersBuild

Olivier Babin and Naunidh Singh Bhalla know a thing or two about how systematic ideation uncovers massive opportunities. When they teamed up to determine their first startup idea (using RDI), they spent 6-9 months exploring multiple hypotheses in parallel, conducting deep customer discovery, and exploring potential solutions. The result? Tetrix is now tackling a critical pain point in the alternatives space: automating and scaling information extraction from unstructured LP reports while delivering deeper analytics on portfolio performance. The case study explores: - Why exploring multiple "haystacks" in parallel is crucial - How to balance customer feedback with founder conviction - The role of prototyping in idea validation - Key qualities that set successful founding teams apart Check out the link in comments for more 👇

AI and robotics are reshaping how we build everything—from aircraft to battery cells. Labor shortages, supply chain fragility, and geopolitical pressures are accelerating the shift toward automation, AI-driven processes, and re-industrialization in the West. 🏭 🤖 🔧 ⚡ At Innovation Endeavors, we’re backing founders building the future of manufacturing—faster, more flexible, and more resilient. Machina Labs is a great example: leveraging AI & off-the-shelf robotics, Machina is transforming the process of sheet metal forming and, as a result, the capabilities of downstream products and systems. Thilo M. Braun and I consolidated our thinking on key tailwinds in the space and what we're excited about. Let us know what you think! #AI #Manufacturing #Automation #IndustrialTech #Robotics

🚨 Trade wars, supply chain disruptions, and labor shortages have exposed the cracks in traditional manufacturing. Our very own Sam Smith-Eppsteiner and Thilo M. Braun share how AI and robotics are paving the way for a more agile and resilient future -- and highlight the innovators in the sector the charge. 🤖✨ We’re proud to back companies like Machina Labs, Formlabs, Fero Labs and Citrine Informatics driving innovation to meet the challenges in manufacturing head-on. 💡 We’re only scratching the surface of what AI and robotics can do to automate manufacturing. Where do you see the biggest opportunities to revolutionize the industry? Share your thoughts below! ⬇️

We continue to be excited about domain-specific AI for physical industry, and with falling costs demonstrated by DeepSeek, the opportunity is becoming increasingly tractable for startups. Here Sam Smith-Eppsteiner and I share why AI advancements are particularly well suited to revolutionize the operations of legacy sectors. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss why industrials are ready for a new brain, or if you have a different perspective on the challenges and potential in these markets 🏗️🔋🛠️⚙️🧠

AI is making its way into the physical economy 🛠️⚡🏭 . Industries like construction, energy, and manufacturing run on fragmented systems, unstructured data, and decades of tacit knowledge that's hard to access. AI—through domain-specific models & product, advanced search, and automation—is starting to change that. Josh Rapperport and I see five major themes driving this shift: 1️⃣ Legacy systems of record – AI will likely sit on top of brittle ERPs and PDFs, not replace them (yet), creating new systems of knowledge and action. 2️⃣ Unstructured documentation – Technical drawings, blueprints, and logs are finally searchable. 3️⃣ Walled gardens – Industry-specific AI needs private, proprietary data to work. 4️⃣ The “Great Crew Change” – Capturing expertise before it retires. 5️⃣ Falling costs of domain-specific models – Smaller, specialized models are getting cheaper and better. We’ve backed companies like Trunk Tools, Parspec, Afresh, and Cadstrom.io tackling this head-on, and we think we’re just scratching the surface. If you’re building AI for the real world, let’s talk. #AI #physicaleconomy #industrials

Out of everything we built lately, this is what everyone is most excited about: you can now get Augment without talking to sales! https://lnkd.in/gWpRYhgG Free for limited time, with data privacy and security (absolutely no model training on your data!)